Inside Health

Soaring Prices Spur a Revolt in Scientific Publishing

By CAROL KAESUK YOON

Published: December 8, 1998

Esoteric and highly technical, scientific journals have never been viewed as a hot publication market. In recent years, however, scientific journals have become big business, with large commercial publishers entering a scene once dominated by nonprofit scientific societies whose only goal was to disseminate scientific information. It is a change that many academics say has sent prices skyrocketing -- with some journals now costing libraries more than $15,000 a year.

But scientists, whose universities are often unable to afford the very journals to which they are giving their research findings, are now teaming up with irate librarians to fight back. They are creating their own journals to compete with expensive commercial publications, and offering them at one-half to one-twentieth the price.

Fomenting this revolution is Sparc, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a group of more than 100 major research libraries helping these rebel journals get established by committing to buy them.

Many of the new journals are coming out of scientific societies, but the poster child of the movement is Evolutionary Ecology Research. It was created by a professor who was so fed up with the price increases of commercial publishers that he abandoned a journal he helped create, starting the new journal with his own money and the editorial assistance of his wife.

''The original deal was that the journal would be available as inexpensively as possible,'' said Dr. Michael Rosenzweig, a professor at the University of Arizona whose entire board of editors defected along with him. ''This has got to stop.''

Although the battle is being fought over subscription prices, what is really at stake, researchers say, is the scientific process itself, which depends so heavily on the ready exchange of scientific information.

''These prices have been a complete disaster,'' said Ken Frazier, director of the general library system at the University of Wisconsin and chairman of Sparc's steering committee. With many journal prices increasing 20 to 30 percent a year, Mr. Frazier said his libraries were forced to drop half their physics journals in the last decade.

''How can you repeatedly increase prices and not understand that you're damaging scholarly communications?'' he asked. ''What must they be thinking?''

Commercial publishers insist, however, that their publications are high quality and remain a good value. ''The goal of any business is to make money,'' said Dr. Peter Sheperd, managing director of Elsevier Science in Switzerland, a division of Reed Elsevier, one of the biggest commercial publishers of scientific journals. ''I don't see that as incompatible with serving the needs of scientific communication.''

The real problem, many say, is that commercial publishers have discovered they can raise prices with impunity, since universities must buy the most important journals, no matter what the cost. And scientists will continue to publish their best work, even in journals neither they nor their libraries can afford, because prestigious publications are crucial to getting grants, promotion and tenure.

''Commercial publishers began to realize the gold mine that they had and that everything was working to their advantage,'' said Mary Case, director of the Office of Scholarly Communications at the Association of Research Libraries in Washington.

In fact, researchers say, academia is a paradise for publishers. First the public pays for most scientific research through, for example, the National Science Foundation. Then universities pay the salaries of scientists who do virtually all the writing, reviewing and editing. Universities sometimes even provide free office space to journals. Finally, authors typically sign over their copyright to publishers, who can sometimes bring in many millions of dollars a year in subscriptions for a single high-priced journal -- subscriptions paid by university libraries supported by tax dollars and tuition.

Commenting on the profits being made by commercial publishers, Dr. Mark McCabe, an economist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who is one of the few researchers studying this unusual market, said, ''It is clearly dramatic.''

Librarians say that what happened with Dr. Rosenzweig's journal was typical. Twelve years ago, Dr. Rosenzweig, a professor at the University of Arizona, came up with the idea for the journal Evolutionary Ecology and began publishing it with Chapman & Hall. Then Chapman & Hall was bought by International Thomson Corporation and the journal was then sold to Wolters Kluwer, an international publishing company based in Amsterdam. At each turn, Dr. Rosenzweig said, despite his objections, the price went up and the number of scientists to whom it was available went down.

When Dr. Rosenzweig quit, to found Evolutionary Ecology Research, his entire board of editors came with him. With their backing, Dr. Rosenzweig, who has called the new movement a ''slave revolt,'' said authors had been supportive of his new journal, submitting high-quality manuscripts. Dr. Rosenzweig, who spent Thanksgiving weekend working on the first issue of his new journal with his wife, Carole, said Evolutionary Ecology Research would cost libraries about one-third of the price of the Kluwer journal, which is about to go up to $777 a year. Peter Katz, a lawyer for Kluwer Academic Publishers, declined to discuss the journals, saying he did not want to jeopardize discussions being held between himself and Dr. Rosenzweig's lawyers.

Sparc's other efforts include three new journals from the American Chemical Society and an electronic journal -- a cheaper, quicker form of publication that some say may be Sparc's best hope -- from the Royal Society of Chemistry called PhysChemComm. Selling to libraries for $353 a year, PhysChemComm is intended to compete with Elsevier's Chemical Physics Letters, which costs more than $8,000.

In explaining their higher prices, commercial publishers say they have additional costs that scientific societies do not have, including supporting an international network of offices. They also note that societies receive additional income from members' dues. Publishers are also quick to point out that there can be other reasons for increased prices than merely increasing profits, like increases in the quality or quantity of articles.

But Dr. McCabe said that quite often there was no such explanation. From 1992 to 1996, Dr. McCabe said, there was no increase in the quality or quantity of articles in the journal Brain Research, a publication infamous among librarians for its high cost -- more than $15,000 year -- yet the price of the journal nearly doubled.

''How do you explain the price increase, except as taking advantage of the situation?'' Dr. McCabe asked.

And while publishers have suggested that currency exchange rates might explain the rising dollar prices for foreign-produced journals like Brain Research, Dr. McCabe said that fluctuating exchange rates simply did not explain such spiraling prices.

Dr. McCabe said that publishing mergers, however, did result in journal price increases, as did decreasing circulation. That is, when libraries drop high-priced journals, publishers often raise the prices of their other journals even higher in an effort to recover the same revenue from fewer subscribers.

At the moment, there is no sign of prices flagging, and similar pricing practices have already begun showing up in the social sciences and humanities. In the meantime, Mr. Frazier said Sparc would press on, urging libraries and scientists to support the new journals. ''If we can demonstrate that we can help the good guys,'' he said, ''then there is hope.''

Photo: Dr. Michael Rosenzweig and his wife, Carole, publish the journal, Evolutionary Ecology Research, from their home in Tucson, Ariz. (Norma Jean Gargasz for The New York Times)